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Turok Rage Wars (1999) Review
a month ago
KILL FRIEND: YES
(that is actually what they call their friendly fire setting)
__________________________________________
Turok is a boomer shooter series (that started out as a comic series) where the whole game is the embodiment of "No Kill Like Overkill" & "More Dakka" and unfortunately, rage wars has very little of those moments.
Turok Rage Wars (RW) is a multiplayer focused boomer shooter that takes after Quake 3 and Quake Live in which the whole focus of the game is just all about arena shooters. This on its own is fine as Turok does have a pretty fun MP mode especially as the N64 was the ultimate couch multiplayer machine back then. So it makes sense that Turok would pivot to a multiplayer only game and expand on what the devs did with Turok 2: Seeds of Evil.
Now, I have a soft spot for this game as I had a blast replaying the game over and over because I didn't have a memory pack so everytime I turned off the N64, I lost all my data. Even I tried to leave the N64 running just to keep my progress so when I turned on my TV the day after, the game froze after only 5 seconds. Point is that I have too much memories from playing this game when I was 9 - 10 yrs old.
And here I am more than 2 decades later, having fully completed the game (via a crappy emulator) and all the extra modes knocking this game off my bucket list. So how does it hold up? That's what I aim to elaborate upon.
Rage wars starts out with the choice of playing MP but the meat and potatoes of the game is the 1P trial mode in which you pick a character and play through a unique mission tree for that character. You also have a fixed loadout for that character that you have to learn and master. Each mission takes place on a predefined MP map with defined win conditions such as "Get 5 kills with 3 lives" and it's really that simple. If you complete the trial, you can either get new guns, unlock Alt-Fires, get lives, or get upgrades to your max HP and ammo capacity.
This game is unique among arena shooters in that it lets you pick your load out before you start the game so you can choose from 2 Bullet weapons, 2 energy weapons, and 1 explosive weapon. This is reflected in the maps as instead of picking up guns, you just pick up ammo boxes located on the map next to special weapons and powerups.
I loved the 1P mode because i was so fascinated on wanting to find out what I would unlock for each character but it gets very repetitive when you're playing "Crossroads" for the 13th time with no changes beyond increasing the number of kills required to win. You do get a little better every-time you play it so you feel like you are getting better at RW in terms of mastering the maps and guns but its hard to deny that it just feels like a chore. This is further exacerbated when you actually DO need to clear all the 1P trials with every character as that's the only way you can unlock new characters for couch MP. One character at the very end of the 1P trials is the only one who gives you a gun you can only use in MP and the 1P mode gets harder with each character beaten to the point that you have to get 7 kills with 2 lives against hard AIs. It just gets tiring and loses its magic the more characters you clear.
The weapons should be the best part of the Turok games but RW just has so many mediocre weapons that very few stand out. A lot of guns in T1 and T2 came back redesigned for RW but they feel like straight nerfs. The auto shotgun from T1 becomes a pump shotgun while the Mag 60 from T2 goes from feeling like a rapid M93R to the slow ass fortnite burst rifle. The Scrorpion launcher comes from T2 but it fires a single rocket instead of the 3 in T2. The Tek Bow becomes the Tek crossbow and has no splash damage. of the 8 energy weapons, 5 cost too much ammo to use for so little while 2 of them need their alt-fires unlocked to become good and 1 is MP only. As you can see, the guns that came back got worse while the new guns fail to impress save for the Inflator.
And yes, the inflator does with it says, blows up the enemy till they pop. Also the good energy weapon with an absolutely broken Alt-Fire that even ignores invincibility powerups.
You do get new weapons in-game which come in the form of support weapons but 3 are just for show. The PFM mines and iron claw often dont get triggered while the Cerebral Bore no longer instantly kills an enemy. The sentry gun is the only good one as it gets consistent kills.Power-ups are fun but sometimes they suck as you can end up with a useless power-up such as teleporting when you take ANY type of damage. It just adds to the feeling that everything is nerfed for the sake of balance.
The AI is decent at least but the hard mode AI just cheats so often that I would not fault you if you used cheats to clear those missions while your friendly AI just gets themselves killed too often. Its serviceable. Each character does look diffirent but they often end up feeling the same as they have to be the same size in MP for fairness so you have giant monsters such as the mantid soldier and the oblivion spawn being as tall as Turok despite being taller in T2.
The maps themselves are fine and snappy for 4P multiplayer but the best I can say is that almost all of them feel meh like you jut show up and you're done. They end up reusing a lot of textures so you will see the same tileset show up across multiple maps which again, contributes to the samey repetitive feeling. What confuses me is that there are maps with lava in them so you shouldn't jump into them, right? Well Acclaim unironically put powerups and weapons IN THE LAVA so if you're at full HP and dip into the lava, you could ens up with 40 or 30 HP left with only a Cerebral Bore to show for it. Just, WHY.
If you clear everything in game, then you get two bonus modes "time trial" and "Frag fest" in which you have to beat the mission on a time limit while the latter forces you to use only 1 or 2 guns to clear the mission. Both are decent but I think they would have been better implemented into the standard mission trees. The bosses are challenging but manageable especially as you kill them multiple times.
So overall, this is a very repetitive game. Its s a solid shooter but everything has been sterilized or nerfed for balance so it just feels very very rote. Had Acclaim put more work into making the trials and maps feel unique, I would be telling a different story but as it stands, RW is a game that you're better off ignoring if you're not a completionist or a die hard Turok fan.
There's some good ideas here such as the loadouts but they're so far and few in between that its no wonder why Nightdives does not want to make RW remastered.
(that is actually what they call their friendly fire setting)
__________________________________________
Turok is a boomer shooter series (that started out as a comic series) where the whole game is the embodiment of "No Kill Like Overkill" & "More Dakka" and unfortunately, rage wars has very little of those moments.
Turok Rage Wars (RW) is a multiplayer focused boomer shooter that takes after Quake 3 and Quake Live in which the whole focus of the game is just all about arena shooters. This on its own is fine as Turok does have a pretty fun MP mode especially as the N64 was the ultimate couch multiplayer machine back then. So it makes sense that Turok would pivot to a multiplayer only game and expand on what the devs did with Turok 2: Seeds of Evil.
Now, I have a soft spot for this game as I had a blast replaying the game over and over because I didn't have a memory pack so everytime I turned off the N64, I lost all my data. Even I tried to leave the N64 running just to keep my progress so when I turned on my TV the day after, the game froze after only 5 seconds. Point is that I have too much memories from playing this game when I was 9 - 10 yrs old.
And here I am more than 2 decades later, having fully completed the game (via a crappy emulator) and all the extra modes knocking this game off my bucket list. So how does it hold up? That's what I aim to elaborate upon.
Rage wars starts out with the choice of playing MP but the meat and potatoes of the game is the 1P trial mode in which you pick a character and play through a unique mission tree for that character. You also have a fixed loadout for that character that you have to learn and master. Each mission takes place on a predefined MP map with defined win conditions such as "Get 5 kills with 3 lives" and it's really that simple. If you complete the trial, you can either get new guns, unlock Alt-Fires, get lives, or get upgrades to your max HP and ammo capacity.
This game is unique among arena shooters in that it lets you pick your load out before you start the game so you can choose from 2 Bullet weapons, 2 energy weapons, and 1 explosive weapon. This is reflected in the maps as instead of picking up guns, you just pick up ammo boxes located on the map next to special weapons and powerups.
I loved the 1P mode because i was so fascinated on wanting to find out what I would unlock for each character but it gets very repetitive when you're playing "Crossroads" for the 13th time with no changes beyond increasing the number of kills required to win. You do get a little better every-time you play it so you feel like you are getting better at RW in terms of mastering the maps and guns but its hard to deny that it just feels like a chore. This is further exacerbated when you actually DO need to clear all the 1P trials with every character as that's the only way you can unlock new characters for couch MP. One character at the very end of the 1P trials is the only one who gives you a gun you can only use in MP and the 1P mode gets harder with each character beaten to the point that you have to get 7 kills with 2 lives against hard AIs. It just gets tiring and loses its magic the more characters you clear.
The weapons should be the best part of the Turok games but RW just has so many mediocre weapons that very few stand out. A lot of guns in T1 and T2 came back redesigned for RW but they feel like straight nerfs. The auto shotgun from T1 becomes a pump shotgun while the Mag 60 from T2 goes from feeling like a rapid M93R to the slow ass fortnite burst rifle. The Scrorpion launcher comes from T2 but it fires a single rocket instead of the 3 in T2. The Tek Bow becomes the Tek crossbow and has no splash damage. of the 8 energy weapons, 5 cost too much ammo to use for so little while 2 of them need their alt-fires unlocked to become good and 1 is MP only. As you can see, the guns that came back got worse while the new guns fail to impress save for the Inflator.
And yes, the inflator does with it says, blows up the enemy till they pop. Also the good energy weapon with an absolutely broken Alt-Fire that even ignores invincibility powerups.
You do get new weapons in-game which come in the form of support weapons but 3 are just for show. The PFM mines and iron claw often dont get triggered while the Cerebral Bore no longer instantly kills an enemy. The sentry gun is the only good one as it gets consistent kills.Power-ups are fun but sometimes they suck as you can end up with a useless power-up such as teleporting when you take ANY type of damage. It just adds to the feeling that everything is nerfed for the sake of balance.
The AI is decent at least but the hard mode AI just cheats so often that I would not fault you if you used cheats to clear those missions while your friendly AI just gets themselves killed too often. Its serviceable. Each character does look diffirent but they often end up feeling the same as they have to be the same size in MP for fairness so you have giant monsters such as the mantid soldier and the oblivion spawn being as tall as Turok despite being taller in T2.
The maps themselves are fine and snappy for 4P multiplayer but the best I can say is that almost all of them feel meh like you jut show up and you're done. They end up reusing a lot of textures so you will see the same tileset show up across multiple maps which again, contributes to the samey repetitive feeling. What confuses me is that there are maps with lava in them so you shouldn't jump into them, right? Well Acclaim unironically put powerups and weapons IN THE LAVA so if you're at full HP and dip into the lava, you could ens up with 40 or 30 HP left with only a Cerebral Bore to show for it. Just, WHY.
If you clear everything in game, then you get two bonus modes "time trial" and "Frag fest" in which you have to beat the mission on a time limit while the latter forces you to use only 1 or 2 guns to clear the mission. Both are decent but I think they would have been better implemented into the standard mission trees. The bosses are challenging but manageable especially as you kill them multiple times.
So overall, this is a very repetitive game. Its s a solid shooter but everything has been sterilized or nerfed for balance so it just feels very very rote. Had Acclaim put more work into making the trials and maps feel unique, I would be telling a different story but as it stands, RW is a game that you're better off ignoring if you're not a completionist or a die hard Turok fan.
There's some good ideas here such as the loadouts but they're so far and few in between that its no wonder why Nightdives does not want to make RW remastered.
